


Growing Horns

by Cacteye



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Minecraft, Minecraft IRL, No Plot/Plotless, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), President Toby Smith | Tubbo, Toby Smith | Tubbo Has Horns, Tubbo is doing some investigations, tubbo moment but it's morally grey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28282185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cacteye/pseuds/Cacteye
Summary: After the war, Tubbo helps Niki out with the simple task of smuggling her brother in. He takes this time to think about the future of New L'Manberg.
Relationships: None
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	Growing Horns

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all! I made this after Ranboo joined the server and then forgot about it. I finished it up and decided might as well, so here it is. It's just a long run of thoughts, so it might not be the most exciting lol. Anyways, hope you have a good day!

During times like this, Tubbo curses the invention of gunpowder.

In one moment, the teen is groggily waking up after being shot again with a chest full of fireworks and in the next he’s doubting he even died yet in the first place.

The fire ball constricts for a brief moment in time, consuming the space in the sphere of gold. A second later, it splinters and in the most poetically morbid description he can think of, the glowing fire blooms and withers the ground instantaneously.

It’s the prettiest firework he’s seen.

The shockwave blows him back into one of the crumbling walls and his head connects with one of the concrete blocks. There’s a flash of hot white pain to the back of his head and it’s familiar to him. 

Bitterly, before he succumbs to unconsciousness once again, he thinks that if he’s inheriting Schlatt’s horns, the least they could do was protect him from head trauma. However, the fates have other plans for him it seems and if he was hoping to use this as an excuse to rest, he’d have to bash his head another time.

Tubbo starts coughing up on the regeneration potion and blinks out the shapes in his eyes as he registers Tommy’s panicked face. The pain is dulled but it still sends numbing waves through his skull. 

Tommy only looks relieved for a bit before he pales again and Tubbo hears why. The drop in temperature is another dead give away as Tubbo watches Techno summon two withers from across the gap.

“Oh shit,” he hears himself mutter against the drumming in his ears. His arm is being pulled upwards and the teen finds himself being supported by his friend.

They both watch in horror as the withers rise, Tommy’s brother cackling in the background. The regeneration potion finally seeps in and he stops leaning on Tommy. 

He picks up a nearby sword and gets ready to fight. But when he turns back, no one is attacking, not even the opposing side. 

Tommy’s face is stricken with grief while Fundy’s eyes are blank with shock. Eret puts a hand to his mouth and Niki lets out a shrill cry. 

Wilbur is falling.

The freezing waters rise and cover Tubbo’s ears as he feels a sense of dread wash over him.

Wilbur Soot has used his last life and Tubbo remembers where he stands on his. Internally, he’s cursing Schlatt for shattering his respawn token because of his goddamn ego.

His grip shakes on the sword as the wither heads turn towards him and he gulps the cold air.

He’s not dying again tonight.

——

Tubbo barely survives and his memory is too shot to know who to thank for that. He assumes it’s Tommy who saved him again and he marks that as another tally to add.

The aftermath of the battle and the destruction of a nation go as well as you’d expect it. Despite what anyone says though, Tubbo thinks this outcome isn’t the worst. They still have L’Manberg, even if it is a massive crater staining the landscape. Sure, they’re being threatened by a global superpower who hates the government, but Tubbo likes to think it adds a little challenge. No one else agrees because that challenge is Technoblade, the anarchist leader to the Antarctic Empire and orphan slayer, but it doesn’t hurt to be an optimist in these trying times.

And Tubbo needs all the optimism he can get as the newly installed President. He’s still trying to wrap his head around the concept.

Thanks to Phil, infrastructure wasn’t something he needed to extremely worry about and thanks to Eret he didn’t need to worry about bookkeeping. Niki had the food supply down by day two.

That left him with three gleaming issues on the table. 

One, their economy is in shambles. Tourism has obviously plummeted down and all their trade goods were consumed in the fires or stolen. Luckily, without using Tommy’s or Fundy’s schemes, this can be easily repaired with some patience and Tubbo has a lot of that stored.

Two, an add-on to one, Tommy is a wild card. If Tubbo can find some way to keep an eye on him, maybe they can sustain the peace for much longer.

(He ignores the voice telling him that war will come no matter what he does. It sounds like Dream.)

Finally, three. The ghosts. Both previous Presidents float around at random hours of the day and it’s been unnerving a lot of the citizens.

Schlatt looks normal, as if nothing even happened. His left horn isn’t even snapped off from that one time Quackity shot him. He barely even appears too, his last sighting being at 3 am, only spotted because Sam was awake late again.

Wilbur on the other hand, in perhaps an ironic sense, is the one causing the migraine in Tubbo’s head. He’s in town most of the time, small talking to anyone who comes near his way and humming songs. Somehow, he ignores all the side glares and pity glances and just keeps going. 

(Tubbo finds more irony in that. He’s read Wil’s journal about his presidential days. His hands shook too much to burn it.)

Still, there’s nothing Tubbo can do about it. No matter how much of a nuisance Wilbur is, he’s not actively harming people. In fact, on the Dreamon Threat scale, he’s not high enough to register.

Plus his family might kill him for that stunt. Even Fundy would be pissed at him. So, he resides occasionally ranting to the ghost. It’s therapeutic really, talking with your recently deceased predecessor who has a nice case of amnesia.

So, with all those problems left to be solved another day and everything else doing steady, what else is there to do in peacetime?

A sharp knock comes from his left.

Tubbo blinks back into reality and flicks the quill back into the inkwell. Black dots line the page and there’s one huge stain in the corner where he spaced out.

He sighs and leaves the page to dry to fix later. When he stands up from the table, the sunlight peaks from behind him from the van windows. The early blue morning sky lightens and slowly the streetlights start to turn off.

The clock ticks above him. 8 AM, on the dot. 

“Tubbo?” Niki’s muffled voice says from the door. “Are you awake in there?”

Suppressing a yawn, he stashes away the inkwell under the table. “Yeah, come in.”

The door opens and Niki steps inside, giving him a soft smile that he returns. The teen leans on the side of the table as Niki takes a seat. She relaxes instantly, so he guesses nothing is wrong.

“What’s up?” he asks, treading the waters. 

Niki takes off her glasses, leans her head back and sighs. Tubbo is about to ask her again, but she looks back at him and this time gives him an awkward half-smile.

“So,” she starts, gesturing one hand, “I might need a favour.”

The teen raises an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“Can you help me summon my brother into the country?”

Tubbo stalls. His left hand raises up and down as he processes before stuttering out, “Summon?”

Niki nods. “My brother has the portal key into the SMP, but there’s a chance he can’t come in the normal way.”

“Why not?”

“You have to promise you won’t freak out about this because it is...odd.” She pauses before waving her hands nervously. “Not that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, Ranboo wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Tubbo doubts that, but shrugs. “Niki, I’ve seen weirder. I’m literally growing horns out of my head because of some magic osmosis bullshit.”

“Speaking of the horns, are your headaches…?”

“They’re not as frequent,” he lies quickly, “what’s the odd thing about your brother Ranboo?”

“He’s half enderman,” she says and her eyes flicker with a defensive look for a moment.

“Well,” Tubbo shuffles his feet around and then knocks on his horns. “Again, definitely not the most disturbing thing.”

Niki lets out a restrained chuckle at that and crosses her arms. “I’m glad you’re not stingy about it, but there’s a problem still.”

She looks down sadly before putting her glasses back on and sighing. The teen notes her fidgeting a carved glass pendant shaped as an ender eye.

“Tubbo, if he uses the portal key, there’s a chance he’ll be transported to the End Realm.”

His eyes snap to hers and widen.

“....what?”

“I know, but portals have always been finicky with him because of some semi-dormant teleportation factor built in him. One time when he was a kid, we went to the Nether without our parents knowing and we got stuck because he kept looping back to the Nether.”

Niki visibly shivers for a moment, either from the autumn air or the memory, Tubbo doesn’t know.

“We were stuck for around a day before a traveller escorted us to another portal and we got lucky with that one.” She pauses again. “We really got lucky.”

Tubbo considers this, thoughts racing in his head. “Why the End realm though?”

“Something about Mobs sensing which realm is their’s or not, I don’t know. His enderman genes apparently pull him to the End while his human ones pull him to spawn.”

He starts to pace and Niki stands up, watching him with wary eyes. “If you want odds, it’s a good 75% chance he’s teleported in the spawn.”

“But if he’s not…”

“Then he spawns in the End.” She grips the pendant in her hand for a second.

The teen stops for a moment and looks at her quizzically. “This isn’t affected by the fact Dream has locked out the End?” 

Niki just shakes her head and Tubbo groans. He huffs out a laugh and leans on the head of the table. 

If Ranboo is transported into the End, Dream’s little magic meter in his head will be alerted for sure. If he finds Ranboo, Niki can say goodbye to her brother for sure. And if Dream finds out that Niki is connected in all of this, Tubbo honestly has no idea what will happen.

“Why do you want him here anyways? I’d imagine he’d be safer elsewhere.” Tubbo grimaces as sunlight starts to pour into the crater. “Especially with our history.”

She hesitates and he sees her glance at the horns. “Tubbo, you know how good we have it here. How mob children are treated here.”

Oh, he knows. He grew up with Tommy’s family after escaping a land laid to waste by anarchy and while his best friend was (debatably) human, the rest were certainly not. 

Phil was a well respected veteran and the goddamn nicknamed “Angel of Death”. His wings would shatter bones with the wind blasts and he could extend his claws to be razor sharp. Tubbo remembers when Phil would come home covered in the smell of iron and feeling raw fear at that power.

But even a man that renowned couldn’t be there to always protect his children. Tubbo has only heard the stories from Wilbur, both alive and in death. Harmless as kids pulling Wil’s piglin ears to an entire town chasing the family of four out because Techno’s tusks started growing out. It’s not hard to forget either when Tubbo recently went into the main hubs for information on withering effects and got stares.

Dream’s server, with all it’s glaring war crimes and constant arson, didn’t care who you were. As long as you didn’t make Dream angry, and he means truly angry, it would generally work out for you. 

Usually.

Tubbo lifts his head and looks at Niki. “I get it, but I don’t know how we would pull it off Niki. How would he even get out of the End? Without killing the Ender Dragon no less.”

“He can do it, he just ‘catches the wave to the Overworld’ or something along those lines,” she says, accenting the air quotes with her hands.

“What.” He breathes through his nose. “What does that even mean?”

Niki mirrors his position and leans to stare at him from the side. Her eyes shine with a determined glint, but there’s dark circles. “I don’t know Tubbo, he rambles a lot. I...I think there’s a way Endermen get into the Overworld and he can go through that way. He has a hard time explaining it.”

Okay, he can work with that. He pushes himself off the table and starts to pace again. “If Ranboo has it covered then we need a distraction so Dream doesn’t investigate."

He huffs. "The problem is, what burst of magic could rival a player spawning in the End?”

They both went silent, Tubbo still pacing and Niki fiddling with her hands. 

He was getting genuinely frustrated and the growing horns wasn’t helping with the increasing pain in his head. The last time he had felt like this was when he accidentally—

Oh.

Tubbo stops and he can feel his mouth slowly lift. 

This could work.

“Niki,” he says, excitedly turning toward his friend. Her head perks up and she looks at him, ready. “I have a brilliant idea.”

“Okay,” the older responds, tilting her head in anticipation, “what do you need?”

If they can pull this off, Tubbo will definitely be riding this adrenaline high for weeks. He rips out a page from his journal and snatches a new inkwell. After hastily scribbling down what he needs, he shows it to Niki.

As she reads it through, her eyes start to brighten and she matches his excited face with her own ferocious smile.

“Let’s get my brother, Mr. President.”

——

When Tubbo stands up, his back cracks and he stifles another bout of yawning. His eyes feel dry when he rubs them and when his gaze drifts to the clock, it’s blurry at first.

What he does make out is that it’s currently three in the afternoon, and he hasn’t slept in almost 48 hours. Nice.

In his sleep deprived state, he briefly wonders why he’s doing this for a guy he doesn’t even know. Though, he figures he can look over the logistics later.

(Once again, he ignores the voice in his head that says he wants to get back at Dream. This one _almost_ sounds like Tommy.)

On that thought, he stashes away the last freshly brewed swiftness potion and steps away to admire his hard work.

The whole room literally glows light blue all around him, leaving no space without light. It strains Tubbo’s eyes to even look at it for long. 

It took a lot of Nether trips, sugar cane, and so much sand courtesy of Niki, but the reward is high enough that he doesn’t care.

Almost five chests worth of swiftness potions now precariously line his shelves. Sam and Phil had helped him strengthen the shelves, so he feels a little bad unscrewing some of the bolts. They had done it after a stray piece of TNT blew up and the shock wave shattered a handful of regeneration potions.

He could feel an easy smile grace his lips. Unintentionally, he had prepared for this moment further back and it was almost poetic.

⎯⎯

The incident had occurred a little more than a week ago and would be the main drive to his plan.

As he was cleaning up the glass, Dream had suddenly showed up at his doorway. When he had asked, the older just said he was checking in on the teen after the explosion and when Tubbo explained the incident, the man had stopped tensing up. He then nodded and left, leaving the younger confused.

Tubbo’s not an idiot though and he’s never one to not remember possible exploits in an enemy’s defense.

Dream’s sense must be wired to catch any medium to large releases of magic, enough so he won’t be alerted if one or four splash potions are used. Tubbo went through his logs the day after the incident. 12 potions had shattered that day, which was enough for Dream to be concerned to check in.

A starting point.

He also waited around the Nether portal and just observed until someone suitable entered. It couldn’t be anyone that’s directly on Dream’s side or regularly interacts with Dream, meaning no Dream SMP or Badlands people. 

Luckily, that still left him with a large pool of people and when Quackity entered the portal, even being the first person to do so that day, Tubbo went to work.

It wasn’t hard to find the man, whistling to himself as he traversed some treetops. Tubbo had taken a moment to get into a character before wearing a bright smile and approached him.

“Dream!” and the whistling paused, the porcelain mask suddenly staring at him. He swung down to Tubbo and casually leaned on a tree.

“Hey President Tubbo, what can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you knew where Quackity was? My communicator is broken right now and I was hoping you might’ve seen or spoken to him.”

Now all he had to do was bank on the fact that this wasn’t one of the rare times Dream carried his communicator on him. Bank on his ego and instincts.

The man had lightly tapped a finger to the painted smile on his mask and then carelessly shrugged. “I think he went to the Nether, but I don’t know if it was him specifically.”

Tubbo cursed the man for being vague. “What does that mean?”

Dream had stayed silent for a moment before responding, “Dunno, just a feeling.”

“Oh, around what time?” Tubbo was so close to getting a definitive answer and he had hoped it wasn’t showing.

“Um, I guess like 4 minutes ago.”

Close enough to define as evidence. 

“Why do you want specifics anyways?” Dream suddenly asked and Tubbo felt his mouth dry before he copied the older’s shrug from earlier.

“Thinking about making a police state.” And by god he hoped Dream bought the distraction and didn’t see his fingers twitch.

By a miracle that could only be attributed to Dream’s dry and random humour, the other boy wheezed like a tea kettle. Tubbo tried not to let out an audible sigh.

As Dream caught his breath, he tilted his mask so Tubbo could see the bottom of his face. 

“I know you’re joking, but _when_ you do need my help, you know where to find me.”

Tubbo didn’t glare, but he did flinch. “Funny Dream, I’ll see you later.”

As he walked away, he could feel Dream’s eyes follow him until he exited the forest.

That night he dusted off one of the old boards and made a scale of Dream’s magic instinct. It wasn’t perfect or even accurate, but it would be useful in a pinch.

He had slipped it under his mattress and ignored the fatigue plaguing him that night. Besides, with winter approaching much faster this year, he couldn’t sleep in this cold.

——

Now was the time.

If his calculations were correct, even though the potions were of a low magic, this should be enough to offset someone spawning in a high density magic environment. Combined that with the extra power given by Niki going through the Nether portal, this should work out.

It has to work out.

One breath in, one out. His eyes track each potion, gleaming off of each other. Flipping open his communicator, he scrolls until he sees Niki’s name.

_Tubbo_: all ready here!_

_Nihachu: yay :D_

_Nihachu: I’ll signal you 5 seconds before to give you time to pull the shelves_

_Nihachu: thank you again tubbo, I really mean it <3 _

_Tubbo_: thank me after, tell me when niki_

Shut. 

While there wasn’t truly on the line for him except maybe some scolding and loss of a lot of respect, he still feels a headache coming on.

To Niki, this might be the only chance to live peacefully with her brother, but to Tubbo, this is an experiment. To see what he can do to Dream.

( _Resourceful and potentially dangerous when curious_ , he read once under his own name. Technoblade’s handwriting is neat and brisk, the flow so natural he could almost call it cursive.)

Another breath in. The cold air seems to cake his lungs and it feels like drowning.

His communicator goes off and he freezes for a moment. Panicked sweat starts to form and his heart races. It takes him only a second to pull the string and another for all the shelves to tip.

He counts off the three seconds remaining.

One.

The first bottle hits the floor and he tries to memorize the spiderweb pattern that forms on impact. There’s a bit of sunlight coming in behind him and it hits the liquid inside just right to make it look like molten lava.

Two.

The symphony. It reminds him of what’s to come long after this. Tubbo knows it’s inevitable no matter what he tells himself and he wishes the end sounds like this when it comes.

Three.

Around half of them have hit the ground and he braces himself. The ground is drenched with the speed potion, seeping through the cracks. Maybe he can use it as tears if he’s quick enough.

Time catches up to him and he trips on his feet, scurrying away at the sound of all that glass breaking at once, drowning out his yelp.

It lasts only another second before all he can hear is the slow droplets making their way to the soil. Tubbo’s heaving gasps are the only thing to reverberate across the walls.

Dream should be here any second and Tubbo can’t seem to move for the life of him. Fuck, he really doesn’t want to move.

He’ll just have to excuse it as blank shock. Feasible enough.

His front door slams open and he’s sitting in the forming pool of speed potions. The effect is almost nauseating as his body starts to convulse. 

It’s a battle between his muscles locking up due to anxiety and the potion’s effect wanting him to move.

The footsteps counted in his head means Dream is leaping on every second stair and there’s a second person with him.

Before they reach his room, Tubbo flutters his eyes closed and open. There’s a startled gasp behind him.

Time to do the hard part.

“Tubbo what….” Sapnap’s voice trails off and in Tubbo’s peripheral, he sees Dream stepping past him, a little bit before the circle of glass.

Tubbo hiccups and puts a shaking hand on one of his horns. “I-I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what happened.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder which burns but he doesn’t pull away as Dream slightly turns his head to stare at him. 

In the sliver of his mask, Tubbo watches as he flicks an eye towards Sapnap and the back to him.

The teen’s blood freezes so fuck it, up the ante.

“I spent, spent so much time on this, fuck, fuck,” which technically isn’t a lie as the dark circles under his eyes will tell.

Dream sheathes the axe Tubbo didn’t even notice he was carrying and crouches down to meet Tubbo’s eye level. 

“Calm down Tubbo, you’re going to be okay,” the older gently says, taking deep breaths in demonstration for the younger. 

He follows and stops fiercely gripping his horn, regretting the ache spreading in the area.

Sapnap gives one squeeze to his shoulder and with another exchanged look Dream gives the other, leaves the room.

It’s just him and the other monster in the room.

“So,” Dream starts, “who do you think did this?”

For a split second, he’s tempted to go off-script and say his best friend’s name. 

It would be so easy to slip in. The small part of him that he's been desperately keeping down for months, no _years_ , whispers in his ear about vindication for being underestimated all the time.

But Tubbo lifts his gaze slightly to bore holes in the black dots representing eyes and represses the urge once more until it turns into the melancholy truth.

Tommy doesn’t deserve it. Neither of them do. They sacrificed their childhoods to fight for a nation built on conflict. 

The worst part is that this web dipped in spilled blood leaves too many tangles to figure out who is to blame.

He wants to feel angry at these facts so badly, he wants to be able to shout curses at the world like Tommy can. 

The teen bites the corner of his mouth and his chest constricts. 

No.

No, he can’t.

“I’m sorry, I, I have no idea. Must be faulty shelves.”

The shift in the air is immediate as Dream sighs and steps back from the boy. The older holds out a hand, hoisting Tubbo back to his feet when he timidly grabs it.

“Don’t worry Tubbo, we’ll find who did it,” and it sounds more like a threat than a reassurance.

He resists the urge to flinch and just nods, one of his shoes soaked with the potion. A facade really to help him avoid scrutiny for the next inevitable question.

“Hey listen,” Dream hesitates before asking, “why did you need this many speed potions anyways?”

Tubbo takes a deep breath in, adding a shake to it. “It’s gonna sound stupid, ‘specially as the President, but Tommy and I were gonna do some exploring to the East.”

(He really wishes they were doing that instead. Like back in the old days where Phil would fly them over jungles and grasslands.)

“We wanted to be quick and be back here in less than a day.”

Dream huffs an amused grunt and unexpectedly ruffles Tubbo’s hair. The teen stills and raises one hand to knock it off before he remembers what Dream is.

It’s over quickly and then Dream is walking out of the room. The older turns his head to look at Tubbo and then the shattered glass everywhere.

The headache grows.

“Unfortunately it looks like you have cleaning to do instead. Do you need any help?”

“No, no, I got it.” He kicks a piece of glass. “Thanks though.”

There’s a bout of silence and Dream is about to shrug off and leave, making this mission a success. But Tubbo is feeling a sudden rush of confidence and curiosity, a feeling that might be his downfall one day.

“Hey Dream, how did you….how does it work?”

He can imagine under the mask, a questioning face. “What do you mean?”

“I just, um, I was just wondering. Your magic meter thing.”

Dream subconsciously lifts a hand to his head. “You mean my ESP?”

Ah that’s what it was called. “Yeah that. I’m just wondering because you, uh, you got here so fast.”

“Oh,” the man dry chuckles, “you think you triggered it?”

Dream’s presence seems to increase tenfold as he carefully steps closer towards Tubbo. He never unsheathes his axe, but there's a new air to him, as if his concern soured. The teen tries his best not to flinch as he stands near the edge of shattered glass.

“Tubbo, I was going to let you off easy again, but I realize what you’re doing.” Dream steps in a careful circle around him, the glass cracking under his boots. “Testing the limits of my ESP.”

The man stops in front of Tubbo and the teen barely believes he’s breathing as he stares into the mask.

“I admit, your little stunt today did make me think something else was happening.” He pauses. “Honestly a scare for me, but luckily it was just you.”

Tubbo gulps. “What are you going to do, Dream?”

“Nothing probably,” Dream sighs and straightens out, “but I’ll stop underestimating you.”

“What?”

“First the jungle base, the near nether portal trap in the first war, and countless other moments,” the masked man lists, counting them up on his fingers. “Tubbo, you’re real cunning when you want to be.”

The teen feels his resolve start to crumble a little. His communicator buzzes but he ignores it. “These are nice compliments.”

Dream nods. “You deserve them. Though, I would really like it if you would end your curiosity here.”

“And what if I don’t?” 

Somewhere inside of him, a younger version of him recoils at the sudden fight instinct. But the Tubbo of now is hardened by not one but two wars and he’s not naive enough to think a third is not on the horizon.

Even Dream seems shocked that he didn’t immediately submit, but it’s gone as quick as it came.

“You don’t get a warning next time and we don’t want another conflict, do we Mr. President.”

Tubbo musters up the most neutral face he can pull off. “I’ll stop for now, but I’m afraid we’ll have to discuss more later.”

He flicks open his communicator and opens the general chat. 

_Ranboo joined the server!_

“It looks like you have a new person to initiate,” he says, facing the screen to Dream. If Tubbo didn’t know any better, he’d say Dream was confused.

The older sighs again and steps back to stare back at Tubbo. “Coincidence, huh.”

“Yeah, but I like to think I can plan better than that.”

Dream is thinking and then he is gone without another goodbye or threat. Finally, Tubbo’s hands start to shake and his knees fold in on themselves, crashing to the ground.

He’s fucked up, but he lives.

He lives as he stands on quivering legs and as he tightly grabs a broom to start sweeping.

His mind is empty but by the time he’s done, he stands alone in the empty room.

Eyes closed. One breath in, one out. Manual reset and open eyes. 

The door shuts behind him and Tubbo makes his way downstairs. He doesn’t stop walking until he gets to the newly refurbished drug van and shuffles inside.

Tubbo checks his notifications.

_Nihachu: He just contacted me, he spawned normally_

_Nihachu: Are you okay Tubbo?_

_Nihachu: Tubbo?_

He types out a quick message and then shuts off the communicator. The teen snatches a new ink and quill, opening a new page in his journal.

The experiment was successful. He’ll have to wait some time until he can try again, but he supposes that it is his strong suit. 

Tubbo may not be underestimated by Dream anymore, but he can be patient. 

Wilbur built the nation, Tommy sacrificed himself for it. Schlatt corrupted the country and then Techno killed it. Now Tubbo is on the centre stage.

He examines the journal.

If he’s patient enough, he can do all of that and more. It’ll just take time.

Tubbo is more than willing to outlast everyone. Another headache grows, sharper but he pays no mind to it. He starts writing and ignores that the horns are visible in his periphery.

(The wars took so much from him. It’s only right to take it back.

Somewhere in the fields, Tommy intercepts Niki and Ranboo. He can see it happening from inside the van and when he sees Tommy and Ranboo alone, he realizes what his best friend is planning, judging by the frantic gesturing towards George’s house and the flint in his hands.

He also realizes that he can have control in this situation if he’s careful enough. 

Tubbo lets it happen. He moves his pawns forward, bait into Dream’s side of the chessboard. This time, he has no intention of losing.)

————

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this one-shot, and remember, respect the boundaries of both CCs and fan creators.


End file.
